Month: April 2002

Well, looky at what we got here: Al Roker, aka. “America’s Favorite Weatherman (and Best Selling Author)”, fresh from his stint on television and obviously jealous of all the attention Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) gets, has his own online journal, complete with swag.

Here’s Christopher Reeve talking about cloning research. Great article. He’s right about everything, but the thing that hit me as the most powerful point is that as funding for scientific progress becomes smaller here and larger overseas, the best scientists will leave our country to set their shops up where they can get the most money for their research. Thereby, the President will continue his crusade to bring the mean intelligence of the United States down to his level (if it isn’t close enough already).

I miss the time late last year when Bush was talking to the American people on television every day, because you would know since he was busy being media-happy, he wasn’t busy trying to make policies.

UPDATE: It seems that the technology advancements our government would rather support comes in the form of shaving razors. (Hm. I could use one of those.)

For the most part I slept well last night. However, I briefly woke up at four o’clock in the morning, just in time to experience one of the worst headaches I ever had. I tried to ignore it for a while but it was just too painful. I forced myself out of bed, got some disgusting water from the Brita filter (can’t they filter out the bad taste?), swallowed two extra-strength Tylenol in one gulp without any fuss (and without chewing), got back in bed and contained my suffering for another forty-five minutes as I tried to fall back asleep.

Here’s what I need to get done some time today.

1. Update my resume. I need to redo my resume to include the work I’ve been doing over the past two months or so.

2. Send out invoices. Since I’m pretty much done on two clients’ websites, I need to make sure they pay me.

3. Research restaurants. I’m probably having dinner with my father tonight (he might have to cancel), and I have to find a decent place to eat in this town.

4. Do work type stuff. …which for today includes printing reports, putting them in binders, filing, and editing: fun, meaningful work. </sarcasm> Also, socialize with coworkers.

5. Make people happy. Okay, I’ll concede and offer differing background colors on this website so people who feel this is too yellow can choose their own. (I might not get to this today.) However, I still like it.

Once again, I’m back to bad sleeping patterns. After not being able to get to sleep Friday night, waking up much too late on Saturday, not sleeping Saturday night at all, and taking a five-hour name Sunday around noon-time, I found myself not being able to fall asleep last night. So I did what was best: stayed up the whole night.

Now I’m here at work at a quarter to nine in the morning. Hopefully tonight I will be tired enough (I know I am right now) to fall asleep at a decent hour.

If you see me online tonight, say to me, “Get thee to bed!”

You might think that I was up all night and all weekend redesigning this site. Not true—this layout was ready to go at least a week ago. Check out the cool stuff on the sidebar.

One thing I did discover while awake in the wee hours of the morning is the new Alexa search. It combines the features of amazon.com with the search capabilities of Google, resulting in software that searches for the terms you provide, and gives you the results with screenshot thumbnails, contact information and reviews. It’s still in the testing and information-gathering stage, but it promises to be the next-generation cool web tool.

I found out some details about the position they plan on offering me here. My title would be Senior Administrative Assistant and my salary offered (mentioned to me by an HR person “off the record”) will be… less than I expected. I’ve started doing a little salary research, and I’ve found that the average salary for an Administrative Assistant (without the Senior bit) in my area is $5,000 more than what they are offering me.

So I plan to do some research and give a good argument as to why I deserve more money.

But the thing is that I don’t really want to be a Senior Administrative Assistant. In order to move to another job at this company, I’d have to stay in this first one for a year. So… I guess I’ll go through all the steps, negotiate a higher salary if I can, continue freelance web design on the side, and learn everything I can about .NET. I’m not going to wait a year in an Admin Assistant job with just the chance something better will come up at this company.

My boss owns a couple of businesses on the side… makes lots of money. I have to start hanging around him more.

Music in public schools is still a cause that’s attracting famous… creatures… to Washington to speak up. Hopefully it’ll be effective, but either way, it’s an interesting publicity stunt.

Hi. My name is Spike, and I’m short. If there’s a stigma against short people, the media surely contribute. It’s like that feeling you get (or “I get,” I should say) when someone asks me what grade I’m in. Granted, that happens very infrequently and usually the question is asked by someone quite elderly who can’t see anyway, but it still bugs me. It’s like that feeling you get when you walk into a classroom to teach and some of the eighth graders are taller than you.

Well, at least I have my looks. :>

Coming this summer to a television near you (or near someone who watches this kind of stuff):

Celebrity Ultimate Dodgeball.

Not quite as violent as Celebrity Boxing but definitely more idiotic. Next season, look out for Celebrity Shoot-Out and Celebrity Suicide-Bombing.

So here’s where things stand with my status at the company. As you may know, I have been temping at this company in Newark for two months or so. They told me at least a month ago that they were interested in hiring me on a full-time basis. This would be a good thing.

My boss is one of many Vice Presidents at this very large corporation, and as such, he’s a bit overextended and is always running around in and out of meetings and business trips. It’s pretty much been a chore to get him to take action on this even though he’s been saying it for a while.

The latest news is that the process has been started. This process entails posting a job opening to the company’s internal job board for the position he is creating for me. After it is posted, they will take inter-company applications and hold interviews, in accordance to policy. So it could still be a couple of weeks before I get to say I actually work for the company.

All I really want is a bigger paycheck. Hm… and more responsibility. And more things to do. And the opportunity to meet more people. And world peace.